Rode All Night

‘Rode All Night’ is an outtake from Paul McCartney’s sessions for his second post-Beatles album Ram.

It was recorded at New York’s Columbia Studios on 22 October 1970, and featured just McCartney and drummer Denny Siewell.

I had this idea – not well formed – for the song. I just had a few lyrics, a few chord ideas, and I knew I was going to sort of scream it. So, we came back after lunch and I said, ‘Let’s do this now, come on.’ So, me and Denny just dived into the studio – me on guitar and him on drums – and we did it. We just stormed up the whole thing. At the end we were like, ‘Yeah! Great!’ And we looked up at the engineer and he was looking a bit puzzled, and he was twiddling the knobs a bit, and then he said: ‘Okay, I’m ready now.’ We went: ‘But that was it! Didn’t you take it?’ He said, ‘No, I was just getting a sound.’ We went ‘Okay,’ thinking very dark thoughts. But it was like, ‘What are we going to do, just sulk or do it again?’ So this is the second take.’

‘Rode All Night’ was officially released on the 2012 reissue of Ram.